“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.”Aristotle

If we want to move from survival, to Success and onto SIGNIFICANCE we need to define each of these words so we can Assess where we are currently.

In many cases we move in and out of each of these modes of operation. Our goal is to exercise more and more leadership in our lives so that we can spend most of our time leading a SIGNIFICANT life.

Survival mode Defined-

NOT Leading Self.

We are slaves to our circumstances instead of to our destiny.

We are slaves to our feelings and emotions instead of to our values.

We are slaves to taking the easy way out, which in the end leads us to a harder life. Life says- “you can pay me now, or you can pay me later; but you will have to pay me and the longer you wait the higher the cost.”

We are slaves to one crisis after another. We are constantly putting fires out instead of learning how to prevent them in the first place.

We are slaves to our five senses instead of to the deepest desires of our soul.

We subjugate our goals to immediate gratification and are never fully satisfied.

We try to eliminate pain by constantly pursuing pleasure; which in the end only brings on more pain and challenges.

We waste our time, instead of investing out time. Time controls us instead of us controlling time.

We surrender our lives for the moment, instead of controlling the moment to make a life.
We live as a reactionary figure with no self-control- stimuli comes into our life and we react.

We exercise no responsibility for our life so we have no ability to control our response to what happens in life.

We have no control of our life because we blame everyone else for our life.

We try to escape our present reality by watching reality TV and sports.

We surrender large chunks of our lives spending time trying to win mindless video games and games on our phones.

The Survival mode is not living it is surviving.

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” David Henry Thoreau

48. What are the most detrimental ways in which you are living in the survival mode?
49. How is that working for you? What are you really getting in return for surrendering control of your life?
50. How can you immediately exercise more leadership in these areas of your life and how can your accountability partner specifically help you?
Almost every decision you make will be improved if you take a longer term perspective.

Don’t ever forget that Leadership is a choice and you can begin to lead as soon as you choose to lead.